Nermo

I woke up at seven and couldn’t convince myself to go back to sleep, so I got up, put the cover on the hot tub, cleaned up the house, collected the empty wine bottles and split a baguette with a poached egg on one side and homemade marmalade on the other.  I managed to finish eating just before everyone else started emerging from their rooms.

            

I spent Sunday at la Cocina learning how to butcher a pig from Ryan Farr of 4505 Meats, formerly chef de cuisine at Orson. It was a thought-provoking and edifying experience.  I gained a better understanding of how pork is produced, learned why various muscles/meats are cooked differently and was taught more precisely where they come from on the animal.  It gave me a greater respect for my food, which is exactly what I was after when I signed up for the class.

I learned a great deal, had a great time and headed home with a huge pile of frenched rib roast, the accompanying boneless rib (great for the OMG Rib recipe), leg, neck, shoulder (the next victim of my Carnitas! recipe), two slabs of pork belly that I will be braising in wine country this weekend, and a foot, with which I am not quite sure what I will do.  I had to turn down bones for making stock and skin for cooking with beans or tomatoes because I already had more meat than I was comfortable taking home on a bus through the Mission.

Ryan was patient, friendly and thorough in his explanations, which took me by surprise, since every other chef I know is a bit of a prick.  My only disappointment, and I don’t know how it could be remedied, is that I didn’t get to do as much of the butchering as I would have liked. Having a second pig would have helped, since many of the steps were done in the demonstration and could not be repeated, but that would have increased the price and the length of the class, neither of which appeals to me, so I really shouldn’t complain.

Overall, it was an outstanding experience and I am looking forward to future classes. Links to full gallery below.

            

TSB and I are renting a gorgeous house in wine country with two other couples this weekend, with the intent of getting out of the city, spending Saturday tasting wine and spending a few days just having fun.  The girls snatched up menu responsibilities for Friday and Saturday dinners before I had a chance to interject, but I love to cook for a crowd and I don’t suffer from hangovers, so I’m taking on post wine-tasting Sunday brunch.

I’ll be serving duck hash with poached eggs, a perennial winner, which can be prepped ahead and quickly sauteed in the morning.  In the news lately, science supports bacon’s hangover healing powers, but  I’ve already covered savory/crispy, so I’m making a braised pork belly, which I butchered myself in class over the weekend.  I still have a ton of marmalade, so I think I will feature it by offering crepes, toast and yogurt with kumquat marmalade along with mimosas and spicy bloody marys.

            

Happy Earth Day, Administrative Professionals Day, National Grilled Cheese Month and Poetry Month.

Tomorrow night is the Opening Night Party for Through Future Eyes:  The Endurance of Humanity, an exhibition at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.  This is kind of a big deal for me, because rather than letting the head of the Visual Arts department curate the show, or hiring a guest curator with decades of experience, they gave the job to six of my high school YAAW students.  Over the past nine months, these six San Francisco girls have poured countless hours into choosing their theme, researching and selecting artists, commissioning new works, and innumerable other tasks to make this happen.  Along with emerging artists, they selected Shepard Fairey and Diego Rivera to round out the exhibition.

Earth Day:

I’m entering a flat-pack Christmas Tree in the Design21 Going with the Grain competition.  Essentially, it’s a modernist/ kitch artificial Christmas tree that uses nearly every inch of a sheet of plywood to create a pop-together tree with a stand, ornaments and a wreath that packs up small to take up minimal space while not in use.  It’s greener than a real tree and sexier than the artificial alternatives.

My major Earthcomplishment this year was training TSB to scrub dishes with the water off, then rinse them into the dishes that need to soak, maximizing water use.  If anyone wants to buy me a countertop dishwasher, I will not object.

This morning, my coworker told me a charming story of how her 5-year-old daughter saw her brushing her teeth with the water running and snapped at her, “Shut that off!” How long will it be before teachers encourage children to report their parents for non-Earth-friendly activities?

Administrative Professionals Day:

I slyly arranged for Take My Admin Out And Get Her Drunk Day to coincide with Administrative Professionals Day so that she won’t be able to object when I demand that it’s my treat again this time. I’ll tell her again that she can pay next time, and that gives me a month or so to figure out an excuse to pay next time.

National Grilled Cheese Month:

It’s National Grilled Cheese Month.  Need I write more?

National Poetry Month:

I will leave you with a masterwork by my favorite poet, Ogden Nash.

The Ostrich
The ostrich roams the great Sahara.
Its mouth is wide, its neck is narra.
It has such long and lofty legs,
I’m glad it sits to lay its eggs.

Coming Soon:  San Francisco Cocktail Week

            

I made sausage, egg and cheese sliders on homemade biscuits with TSB this sunday.  Those towers were almost too tall to eat. I had her sample my marmalade with vanilla yogurt and got the nod of approval.

            

A quick and dirty throw-together; it isn’t pretty, but damn does it taste good.

1/3 pound fresh Ahi tuna, 1/2 inch cubed
1 green mango, 1/2 inch cubed
1 small shallot, minced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 inch piece of ginger, minced
juice of 1 lemon
1 tablespoon ponzu sauce
1/2 teaspoon Sriracha

Combine all ingredients in a small, covered container and refrigerate 1 hour.

            

Since I can’t grasp the concept of moderation, I turned 4.5 pounds of Kumquats into 2 gallons of marmalade this weekend.

Glad I mentioned this plan a couple weeks ago, because Sunday, the SF Chronicle ran an article called Spirits: Bartenders find new ways to sweeten the deal on the nontraditional sweeteners local bartenders are concocting, and even mentioned the blood orange marmalade used at Midi, which inspired this project.

[Feel free to skip down to the recipe if you don't care about the process]  The first batch was 2 pounds of fruit (arduously seeded by hand), 8 cups of water and 8 cups of sugar.  Chopping the fruit in my Cuisinart, I discovering that the blades did little damage to the seeds I missed, which mostly floated to the surface while soaking, so the second batch was tossed into the food processor whole and seeds were skimmed off the next day.  It cut prep time by more than half.

The chopped fruit is soaked in water overnight to soften the skins and to release the natural gelling agents (pectin) from the seeds, which makes your marmalade set up, or else you would be left with fruity simple syrup.

I mixed Thai basil into one batch and tarragon into the other.  Both added a delightful kick and complexity to the marmalade, but didn’t overpower or remove any toast-topper potential.

Kumquat Marmalade Recipe:

• 2.5 pounds kumquats, washed and stemmed
• 1/2 gallon water (8 cups)
• 4 pounds sugar (about 9 cups)
• Optional fresh Thai basil or fresh tarragon, finely chopped

1. Pulse kumquats in food processor until finely chopped
2. Soak fruit in water for 24 hours, then skim and discard seeds
3. In a large saucepan, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 1 hour
4. Stir in sugar gradually and simmer for 20-30 minutes, stirring frequently and skimming off foam and errant seeds
5. Add optional herbs to taste to the hot marmalade
6. Follow proper canning procedure if you intend to save for more than a couple weeks

            

Booze Reviews:

• I’m a big fan of the Nirvino community of cocktail reviewers.  Mine can be found at mquinnsweeney.nirvino.com
• 97 Bottles is a new brew review site.  I haven’t explored much yet, but it seems like a straightforward review site
• Snooth offers a full community experience with links to online wine merchants to score the best prices

Design Contests:

• Going with the Grain: design a flat pack object from one sheet of plywood and minimal hardware
• Hugo Awards Logo: create the logo for the annual sci-fi lit awards.  Be recognized by nerds across the world!
• The 4th Bin: design an e-waste bin to help NYC keep old computers off the curb

Stuff I don’t actually want, but briefly desired:

• Snow White MacBook made me want to mod my MBPro. Garden of Eden or roasted pig with the apple in its mouth?
• My own TV show or video podcast. I don’t want to be famous, but it might be the motivator to get me in better shape
• Moleskin is now letting you customize your little black notebooks.
• Skinny LaMinx offers a great view of her process creating cut paper designs, but who has time for that?

            

I’ve been on a stationary culinary quest this week:  too busy to do much in the kitchen, but now that other projects are winding down, I’ve been doing a lot of planning and research for gastronomical experimentation and I will hopefully have a little more time to play in the kitchen.

It just hit me that I missed yuzu season, but kumquats are back and I reckon I should make a little marmalade this weekend, inspired by the cocktails at Midi, where they use house-made blood orange marmalade in the margaritas.  They also make their own syrups and bitters, which got me thinking that I need to step it up in the cocktail component category as well.  Look for more mixology makings in the near future.

I haven’t forgotten about my plan to make classic and unconventional condiments either.  Last week’s mayo fell a little flat, tasting of mediocre canola oil until I added the bacon fat, but Alton Brown suggests corn oil, which I have in spades, so I will give that a try, as well as another topping or two, depending on my mood and produce selection.

Here’s what’s been on my screen:

• Chicago Tribune’s Annual Peep Diorama Contest is on.  I’m brainstorming scenes that I will build and looking for collaborators, but damn, the timeline is short.  I may buy peeps at a discount after Easter and build something in the hope that they host the contest again next year.
• Frank Bruni questions the dollar per drink tipping standard in the New York Times, which irritates me, because I don’t now any decent bartenders who aren’t making good money at a dollar a drink, and his justifying tipping by percentage because some drinks cost more is silly.  Pouring a $10 beer takes as much time and effort as pouring a $2 beer.  Crafting a superior cocktail may well warrant a bigger tip, but that has nothing to do with the cost of the drink.
• The Vessel One makes me wish I were a tea drinker.  This ceramic and silicone teapot goes right on the burner, from which it can be picked up by (bare) hand, and then set on it’s magnetic trivet, which becomes part of the pot.  The best part: it’s stark white until filled with hot liquid, at which point, a blue design appears, ranging from pretty flowers to Space Invaders baddies.
• Chefs: SF’s Nate Appleman, was honored as one of Food and Wine Magazine’s Best New Chef’s of 2009.  The linked interview/profile offers some insightful stuff, including his thoughts on butchery, with which I’ve always been fascinated.  Grant Achatz, one of my favorite foodies to follow on Twitter, wrote a piece for the Atlantic Monthly on experiential dining in which he contemplates tossing out Alinea’s set 27-course dining experience for a choose-your-own-adjective-adventure menu.
• Photos: Saveur offers a photo-essay of 20 Amuse-Bouches from Great American Chefs, which I am preserving via link for future inspiration when I need to throw together some small plates, and Eat Me Daily displays a great series of photographs by artist Stephanie Diani with all of her models dressed in offal.